War and Peace War and Peace Leo Tolstoy This eBook was designed and published by Planet PDF For more free eBooks visit our Web site at http //www planetpdf com/ To hear about our latest releases subsc[.]
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy This eBook was designed and published by Planet PDF For more free eBooks visit our Web site at http://www.planetpdf.com/ To hear about our latest releases subscribe to the Planet PDF Newsletter War and Peace BOOK ONE: 1805 of 2882 War and Peace Chapter I ‘Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist - I really believe he is Antichrist - I will have nothing more to with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how you do? I see I have frightened you - sit down and tell me all the news.’ It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the wellknown Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St Petersburg, used only by the elite All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows: of 2882 War and Peace ‘If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between and 10- Annette Scherer.’ ‘Heavens! what a virulent attack!’ replied the prince, not in the least disconcerted by this reception He had just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at court He went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa ‘First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are Set your friend’s mind at rest,’ said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be discerned ‘Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feeling?’ said Anna Pavlovna ‘You are staying the whole evening, I hope?’ of 2882 War and Peace ‘And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday I must put in an appearance there,’ said the prince ‘My daughter is coming for me to take me there.’ ‘I thought today’s fete had been canceled I confess all these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.’ ‘If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been put off,’ said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed ‘Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev’s dispatch? You know everything.’ ‘What can one say about it?’ replied the prince in a cold, listless tone ‘What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours.’ Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed, as in a of 2882 War and Peace spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst out: ‘Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria Perhaps I don’t understand things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just one Whom, I ask you, can we rely on? England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander’s loftiness of soul She has refused to evacuate Malta She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions What answer did Novosiltsev get? None The English have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only of 2882 War and Peace desires the good of mankind And what have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe is powerless before him And I don’t believe a word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either This famous Prussian neutrality is just a trap I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored monarch He will save Europe!’ She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity ‘I think,’ said the prince with a smile, ‘that if you had been sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by assault You are so eloquent Will you give me a cup of tea?’ ‘In a moment A propos,’ she added, becoming calm again, ‘I am expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best French families He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones And also the Abbe Morio Do you know that profound thinker? He has been received by the Emperor Had you heard?’ ‘I shall be delighted to meet them,’ said the prince ‘But tell me,’ he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the question he was of 2882 War and Peace about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, ‘is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor creature.’ Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it for the baron Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was pleased with ‘Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,’ was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna’s face suddenly assumed an expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke beaucoup d’estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness The prince was silent and looked indifferent But, with the womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of a man recommended to the of 2882 War and Peace Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said: ‘Now about your family Do you know that since your daughter came out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful.’ The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude ‘I often think,’ she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate conversation- ‘I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed Why has fate given you two such splendid children? I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest I don’t like him,’ she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows ‘Two such charming children And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and so you don’t deserve to have them.’ And she smiled her ecstatic smile ‘I can’t help it,’ said the prince ‘Lavater would have said I lack the bump of paternity.’ ‘Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you Do you know I am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves’ (and her face assumed its melancholy of 2882 War and Peace expression), ‘he was mentioned at Her Majesty’s and you were pitied ’ The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, awaiting a reply He frowned ‘What would you have me do?’ he said at last ‘You know I did all a father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one That is the only difference between them.’ He said this smiling in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant ‘And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father there would be nothing I could reproach you with,’ said Anna Pavlovna, looking up pensively ‘I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children are the bane of my life It is the cross I have to bear That is how I explain it to myself It can’t be helped!’ He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture Anna Pavlovna meditated ‘Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?’ she asked ‘They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don’t feel that 10 of 2882 War and Peace without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable I raise my arm to perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform an action without a cause is the cause of my action But even if- imagining a man quite exempt from all influences, examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any cause- we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause, is no longer a man In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability (1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of space And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain measure of freedom remains (2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action we are examining and the judgment 2868 of 2882 War and Peace upon it, that period will be finite, while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never be absolute inevitability (3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and so again we never reach absolute inevitability But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case- as for instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot- complete absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there is no freedom there is also no man And so the conception of the action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a man’s completely free action And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of time, and an infinite series of causes 2869 of 2882 War and Peace To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond time, and free from dependence on cause In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time, and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man’s whole outlook on the universe is constructed- the incomprehensible essence of life, and the laws defining that essence Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise (2) Time is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable otherwise (3) The connection between cause and effect has no beginning and can have no end 2870 of 2882 War and Peace Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me, consequently I include space (2) I measure flowing time by the fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as living, consequently I am outside time (3) I am beyond cause, for I feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man’s consciousness Inevitability without content is man’s reason in its three forms Freedom is the thing examined Inevitability is what examines Freedom is the content Inevitability is the form Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one another as form to content, we get the mutually exclusive and separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability Only by uniting them we get a clear conception of man’s life Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible 2871 of 2882 War and Peace All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence of life to the laws of reason The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity, animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life in man and we call that freedom But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton’s law), so too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and historic laws) All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the laws of reason 2872 of 2882 War and Peace Man’s free will differs from every other force in that man is directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way differs from any other force The forces of gravitation, electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one another in that they are differently defined by reason Just so the force of man’s free will is distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it Freedom, apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable sensation of life And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity, or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the same way does the force of free will form the content of history But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of metaphysics 2873 of 2882 War and Peace In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force Vital force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know of the essence of life So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability, what is unknown we call free will Free will is for history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know about the laws of human life 2874 of 2882 War and Peace Chapter XI History examines the manifestations of man’s free will in connection with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is, it defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a science only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws The recognition of man’s free will as something capable of influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the same for history as the recognition of a free force moving the heavenly bodies would be for astronomy That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of laws, that is, of any science whatever If there is even a single body moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists If any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical law can exist, nor any conception of historical events For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a consciousness of man’s will in 2875 of 2882 War and Peace the present moves in space, time, and dependence on cause The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the more evident are the laws of that movement To discover and define those laws is the problem of history From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events in man’s freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is impossible, for however man’s free will may be restricted, as soon as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law becomes impossible Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal, that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes, and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of laws as its problem The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously with the self-destruction toward which- ever dissecting and dissecting the causes of phenomena- the old method of history is moving 2876 of 2882 War and Peace All human sciences have traveled along that path Arriving at infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities Abandoning the conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements In another form but along the same path of reflection the other sciences have proceeded When Newton enunciated the law of gravity he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction; he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the infinitely small The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving aside the question of cause, they seek for laws History stands on the same path And if history has for its object the study of the movement of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will 2877 of 2882 War and Peace Chapter XII From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the ancients By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic worlds But even after the discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time From the time the first person said and proved that the number of births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had been built were destroyed in their essence By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue studying historic events as the results of man’s free will For if a certain 2878 of 2882 War and Peace mode of government was established or certain migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as the cause And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions The struggle between the old views and the new was long and stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy Theology stood on guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the new foundation Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting revelation In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes passion and stifles truth On the one 2879 of 2882 War and Peace hand there is fear and regret for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the other is the passion for destruction To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the son of Nun To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon against religion Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on those conceptions So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which the institutions of state and church are erected As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or nonrecognition of 2880 of 2882 War and Peace something absolute, serving as the measure of visible phenomena In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free will As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth’s fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one’s own personality But as in astronomy the new view said: ‘It is true that we not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we not feel) we arrive at laws,’ so also in history the new view says: ‘It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.’ In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not 2881 of 2882 War and Peace exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious 2882 of 2882